Ready and Raring to Go!

Hello everyone!

I’m James Fletcher, your new RUSU President and together with Kara Swift (VP Academic Affairs), Nick Cook (VP Student Activities), Sophie Davies (VP Welfare and Representation) and Ceri Jones (VP Democracy and Campaigns) we make up your RUSU Student Officer team for 2012/13.



Student Officer team 2012/13  : (clockwise from top)
 James, Sophie, Kara, Nick and Ceri.



We are very excited about stepping into the big boots of the outgoing ‘sabb team’ and all the brilliant things that they have won for the students at Reading. The £600k library spend increase, changes to the way the Student Officers are scrutinised and the first ever elections for Part-Time Officers are just some of the amazing wins that they have achieved for us. I’m sure we would all like to thank them for being such great representatives and wish them every successes for the future.

On behalf of the new team I would like to thank all of you who elected us into office earlier this year in RUSU’s record-breaking elections. We are all committed to start implementing our election manifestos as soon as possible and we look forward to you keeping us on our toes at Student Officer Scrutiny. We will keep you updated on progress as it happens.

The new team will be working in and around our offices (located above The Hub) throughout the summer so if you are around, pop in and come and have a chat with us. We’re always happy to hear your thoughts, views and ideas. If you aren’t in Reading, just drop me an email or come along to one of our democracy meeting when term starts.  

Otherwise, we’ll see you in the Autumn Term for all the fun of Freshers’ Welcome Week!!

Have a great summer!

James Fletcher
RUSU President

Pathetic Fallacy, Last Orders and The Summer Ball

Afternoon all,

I, like all of you I’m sure, am pretty chuffed that the sun is out.  Campus seems like a different place, suddenly it’s awash with people as if the students of Reading  University are solar powered.  Of late, just having a scour over campus, there seems to be quite the element of pathetic fallacy what with the current weather. Now that them gloomy grey skies are out the way and the suns shining everyone seems a lot more chirpy.  The shorts are out, the dangerously misinformed donning the ever fetching “crocs” and those without sensitive teeth are straight in on the ice creams. Smashing.

Being ever the optimist I want to talk about what you’ve all got to look forward to once those exams are over! A minor distraction allowing you to procrastinate and have a peek at something coming up to get you through these last few days/weeks.

Perhaps I read too much into these things but to me the university year has a strange way of fizzling out.  There is a huge build-up of pressure around exams which starts before Easter which is way too early! As a student, every day seems to be a bit of a countdown, you struggle to maintain the motivation to keep going through the revision.  Then the day arrives that you finish your last exam… there’s a mandatory polite shandy or two…or three… or a couple of jugs of pimms followed by in my case a somewhat hazy evening.

Once the initial euphoria has worn off however,  you crazy Van Wilders out there ( you know who you are) no doubt will have a feeling like someone has just rung the bell for last orders at the bar a little bit too soon.  People start going home for the summer, it all ends a little bit too quickly.  This was definitely my experience last year, I loved every second after I finished exams, but it was all ending too soon, it didn’t seem as if there was a fitting way to finish all this university lark off.  That is until the Summer Ball came around…

It’s very rare that you have one of those evenings where everyone you hope to see will be in the same place.  Where there is the opportunity to round off the year or a period of your life on such a grand scale and where you’ll be given the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to people and the place that has played such a large part of your life over the last few years. 

I’m hugely excited about this year’s summer ball, a great line up, open for longer than ever before, a bigger festival tent than ever before, more acts, a bigger fun fair, more bars. It promises to be a brilliant event, In fact for the first time ever we are randomly selecting five lucky tickets for VIP treatment.  Those five people will get to bring three mates with them to a champagne reception, they will have access to our VIP lounge where they will be given a jug of Pimms, a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and iced buckets of beer.  They’ll be given food vouchers for the evening and queue jump for all the fairground rides. They’ll will also be given VIP stage views for all of the acts and most importantly they get a free breakfast in the morning!

While I was writing this blog I thought back to last year’s Summerball… I’m hopelessly in love with Ellie Goulding so it struck me as very odd that she is not the first thing that comes into my head when I do remember that evening…instead like the sentimental old man I’m become, I remember:

Being stood in a festival tent in the middle of a field at 6am, with the sun coming up, Slightly merry (one too many merry) , Singing Never forget by take that in an incredibly manly voice, my suit in an absolute state covered in hog roast apple sauce, looking around me and being surrounded by some of the best people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet.

That was what Summer Ball was for me, after that I remember feeling like I had done my bit with studying at Reading. I felt like I had said all the goodbyes that I needed to and had finished my time as a student on perhaps the best high I could have possibly done.

I hope that you all are fortunate enough to experience what I did last year at this years summer ball and that it’s a brilliant evening. Finally if on the 17th June at 6am if you see someone a little worse for wear in a slightly scruffy suit claiming to go by the name Ben Haines ensure that he makes it safely to Mojo's for a glass of water and some breakfast.

Cheers boys and girls

*winning smile/optimistic grin

See you all soon

Ben

International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Hello everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ken Smailes and I am the outgoing President of RUSU’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans) Liberation Group and the RUSU LGBT Part Time Officer.

Today is an extremely important day for the LGBT community globally; it is the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia or simply IDAHO for short. This day is celebrated every year on May 17th to highlight that the unfair treatment of the LGBT community still happens around the world and still within the UK. It is a day for the LGBT community globally, to join together with the rest of the world and stand up against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

To put the rights of the LGBT community into context, I want to give you a brief history lesson. In 1957 in the UK, Lord Wolfenden, who at the time was the vice chancellor of the University of Reading, wrote a report that called on the removal of homosexuality as an illegal act. It was with this report and continued pressure on the government that homosexuality finally became legal in the UK in 1967. Ever since 1967 the LGBT community in the UK has been slowly receiving more and more rights in their fight for equality. It was only in 2002 that LGBT couples, or single LGBT individuals were given equal adoption rights. Now it looks increasingly more likely that same sex couples will be able to marry. Yet these rights that the LGBT community have in the UK are not universal and even in the USA, in some states, LGBT people can still be removed from their jobs for simply defining as a different sexuality. Equality for the LGBT community has not been achieved in the UK or worldwide.

Unfortunately instances of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are also still very real within the UK and the wider world. This unfair treatment of the LGBT community can come in many forms, whether it is physical harassment, murder, derogatory use of the word ‘gay’ or many other things, for many individuals it is all still too real an occurrence. I was shown this video by a member of the LGBT group recently and it really put the problem of homophobia into context for me:

Today is however a day to create change!

Yes homophobia, biphobia and transphobia is still a very real part of the LGBT communities life but we can all put an end to this, by simply standing up for the equal treatment of everyone. No one deserves to be treated differently just because they are of a different sexuality or gender or sexual orientation. Everyone is equal and we should show this through our actions.

Unfair treatment of anyone whether they are of a different race, gender, sexuality etc doesn’t have a place on our campus or within our community and let’s demonstrate this through our actions.

Ken Smailes
RUSU LGBT President and RUSU LGBT Part Time Officer

NUS LGBT Conference 2012

Ken Smailes 

NUS LGBT Conference, a weekend of drama, policy, motions, Manchester nightlife and development of LGBT rights. I can honestly say I have never been to such an encouraging and thought-provoking conference. The Reading University delegation decided that we would all write a blog/report so that you and the society can see how we voted on your behalf and to encourage you to get involved in the LGBT movement and the fight for ever-increasing rights. 

Over the weekend, I attended a number of different workshops, the most interesting and important to me was one titled ‘faith and sexuality, a dialogue’. This workshop had a lot of relevance to me as I grew up in a very Christian family and have always found the relationship between faith and sexuality particularly difficult to negotiate. The workshop gave advice and how to workshops to have an open and frank discussion about how sexuality and different faiths can work together; you don’t just have to have one or another. It was also really interesting to see how many people at conference both defined as LGBT and as with faith, which was encouraging.

The weekend was mainly filled with motion debate; these motions go into NUS LGBT policy and dictate how the campaign is run over the next year. I am happy to say that the majority of policy passed was brilliant, it included motions to encourage more work on helping trans people parent, sexual health, more equal representation of bisexual people and continuation of the campaign on ending the blood donation ban for men who sleep with men. The motion that did seem to be most controversial was that including Harry Potter and Dumbledore as a gay figure, this definitely brought some strong opinions from the conference floor. All these motions and discussion was really heartening but did make me want to stay on another year to be able to work on these new campaigns!

Lastly the highlight of the weekend for me had to be the NUS LGBT awards and Gala Dinner which celebrated 40 years of the NUS LGBT campaign. There were a total of six awards up for grabs and Reading University Student Union LGBT was eligible for 5 of these. I am very proud to say that we were shortlisted for three of them, which means we were in the top five for these categories out of nearly 100 institutions!! These were Campaign of the Year, Society Development Award and LGBT Higher Education Student of the Year. To get this amount of shortlists was incredible; it is testament to the work of the society, the amazing people in it and the lengths we have all come. You should all feel so proud of yourself and I know we are only going to get better year on year.

Ken Smailes

LGBT President and RUSU LGBT Student Officer

RUSU Marks International Women's Day

To mark this year's International Women's Day Carys Williams from the Reading University Women's Campaign guest blogs for us today.

This International Women’s Day (Thursday 8th March) Oxfam is raising money to help women around the world! Reading University’s Women’s Campaign is organising a cake stall at this year’s Fairtrade Fashion Show to raise money; we are also collecting donations at the event. Raising money for this cause is very important: 70% of those who live in poverty are women.

Oxfam say that by “empowering and equipping a woman with the resources to work her way out poverty transforms entire communities down the generations”.

Inequality has a massive impact on income. Despite completing 2/3 of the world’s working hours women still only earn 10% of the wages made a year. International Women’s Day is designed to raise awareness in the still existing gap in gender equality and to provide women living in poverty with a means of bettering their lives.

We hope that by raising awareness we can contribute to the fights against poverty and to achieving gender equality. An important component in the success of campaigns like these is their popular support and public interest and this is why events such as those hosted in International Women’s Day are important.

To find out more visit Oxfam’s Website: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/WomensDay

Ben Haines: The elections and “The Fear”

Hiya.

Apologies to all of you who over the last week were pestered, harassed, shouted at, flyered, postered, written on and so on and so forth.  Anyone who doesn’t know why this was needs to have a word with themselves.  The RUSU elections 2011/12 took place last week and were a serious success.  The funny thing is, though I just apologised… I’m really not sorry.  Not a sausage. I’m sorry that I’m not sorry.  The elections are magic. 

How did we do?

Here we go jargon and serious face time: Within one week more students take part in a democratic process than any other time during the year.  Nearly 3000 handsome and well-groomed Reading students got online and voted for who they want to lead their student union next year.  More, ladies and gents, than ever before.  If you were part of this, cheers.

Like Kelly Rowland, usually I’m down for whatever  - but in particular I’m down for democracy.  It’s a nice feeling knowing that though on the outside people tend to seem apathetic and a bit sluggish to get involved, they do care about this stuff!  Even the nice young lady who came and sat down and said to me “You do realise I’m only doing this because I want free pizza.” The fact she then sat down and took the time to look at the candidates and work out who she wanted to vote for is a success.

So, who have you got coming in to replace me next year? I know what you’re all thinking…how do you replace the irreplaceable? STOP IT you flirts! Ceri jones, Nick Cook, Cara Swift, James Fletcher and Sophie Davies all did really good campaigning, and off the back of this they are going to be your Student Officer team for next year.  And what a pleasant and amusing bunch of cats they are.  I for one will be happy to hand over my office to Ceri , your new VP for Democracy and Campaigns, secure in the knowledge it’s in safe hands. She’s nice and that.

The Fear

One other thing I wanted to talk about is “The Fear”.  I remember this time last year, when The Fear hit me.  It comes to a point in the year when everyone panics about work, and people become irrational.  The remote gets lost for the TV and there’s a Cluedo-style witch hunt for whose fault it was.  Someone doesn’t do the washing up and they’re now “just the worst guy”. 

Listen Colonel Mustard/ Miss Scarlett! Put the lead piping down and take a little breather.  This time of year is stressful. You need the people around you, like your friends and housemates, to be the ones helping you to calm down.  Make sure you give people some slack, because come exam time you’ll be relying on them to keep you sane.  In the meantime, don’t peak too soon.  Get in some time for R & R, make time to go out with your mates and enjoy the weekends. You’ll feel much better about work when you know you’ve got something to look forward to!

I love feedback.  So… even if you want to just come and have a nag at me about last week, my office is in the RUSU hub.  I’ll provide biscuits and a cup of tea for anyone who does, like the good host I am. 

Finally, I can be followed on twitter! For all things democracy and campaigns follow @rusu_vpdc or for the more exciting stuff without the watershed follow @benjhaines.

I’ll write again before Easter about some really exciting stuff we’ve got coming up in the summer.  In the mean time, I’ve missed you guys.

*flame rekindled, walks away slowly, looks back over shoulder and smiles*

See you all soon

Ben

P.S Campus Central now sells hot-dogs. Quality right?! Another huge win for students, get in there and give them a try, they’re DE-lish.

Student Volunteering Week Success!

20^th – 26^th February was National Student Volunteering Week and RUSU celebrated in style with an action-packed programme, including greenhouse building, talks and a volunteering fayre. This provided students with plenty of opportunity to get involved with volunteering, both on and off campus.

Voices of Reading (the new RUSU community choir) held its first rehearsal at George Palmer Primary School at the start of the week and by the end of an hour the 22 voices were singing in harmony. With members ranging from 6 months old to 70-years-old, this is a true community choir but one that needs more students! You don’t need to have any experience of singing, just come along and give it a go. The choir is free, welcomes all and sings a whole variety of pieces, all from memory.

Thirty-eight charities and community groups attended the volunteering fayre on Wednesday to recruit students, but the highlight of the week was the progress made with building a plastic bottle greenhouse. The eco-friendly greenhouse is being built in the garden at Little Learners Nursery on campus, out of hundreds of plastic bottles. Having levelled the ground and marked out the site on Monday, we returned on Thursday afternoon with a team of volunteers to get to work in the sunshine. With the help of the nursery children we peeled labels, washed bottles and managed to build 2 walls of the greenhouse.

We now urgently need more 2 litre bottles to finish building, so please contact the Students’ Union if you have 2 litre bottles. The children want to get planting so we need to get it finished!

The week also saw the launch of Reading University Volunteering Society – a NEW student–run network. The society will consist of various student representatives who will have responsibility for setting up new volunteering projects, therefore giving students a greater say over volunteering at Reading. By the summer term we hope to have had an afternoon tea in 3sixty for local elderly people on campus, an art mural painted at a local school and a weekly activity programme for children and young people with disabilities up and running. Who knows what else…the student committee will direct the volunteering projects.

As the Society grows, with the help of the Students’ Union, it will support and connect students who are interested in volunteering with events and projects throughout the year. Email volunteer@reading.ac.uk to find out more about volunteering and the Students’ Union.